Dec 20th: Q&A with CTO Morgan Buck - New Voice & Video, Windows, Doors and More!

Reminder set!

So excited to hear what will be improved early next year! Maybe fan favorites 'a better way to organize pages'  and 'Transmogrifier allow copying of folders'? 

Drespar said: Q&A Details Date:  December 20th, 2022 Times:  3:30 PM PT to 4:30 PM PT (10:30 PM UTC to 11:30 PM UTC) Where:  Right here in this thread! Just a quick correction: UTC does not work with AM/PM, but is a 24 hour per day system. Running the above stated times through google gives the following back in UTC: Start:  3:30 PM PT -> 23.30 UTC (11:30 PM UTC, if we were to use the AM/PM system) End:  4:30 PM PT-> 00:30 UTC (12:30 AM UTC, if we were to use the AM/PM system) These hours seems to be off by one hour, compared to what is given by Drespar , this might be due to some daylight savings time messing with the calculations.

Question: What will be done to improve loading video aka animated battlemaps? Many of us are part of amazing Patreons that make them. Even after downsizing the video (under 10mb) they almost never upload. I can send that same video on something like Facebook Messenger in under a minute. 

Question: Space. How can we get more of it? There was a small bump done, thank you. But as a Pro user that runs multiple campaigns, I want more. Especially when thinking about video and music files. Space in the IT world is cheap. Is more space coming in 2023?

Question: Are there any plans to update the Transmogrifier? For instance, the ability to copy an entire folder and all its contents? 

Will Plus users get a storage bump anytime soon?…

Grand DM said: Question: What will be done to improve loading video aka animated battlemaps? Many of us are part of amazing Patreons that make them. Even after downsizing the video (under 10mb) they almost never upload. I can send that same video on something like Facebook Messenger in under a minute.  I would like to double down on this question and expand it to just:  Full-Size Animated Maps when?

I would love to know the status on WebP images and if we could see official support for them.

Wondering about the status of the Pathfinder 2nd edition charactermancer. Has there been any progress and do you have an idea when it will be finished?

What about the Integration of Onebookshelf which was greatly announced a while ago and then kept silent? Is this still a thing?

Questions: Do you have any intention of going back to testing features on the DEV server before pushing them out to all users?  The new Windows/Doors features caused significant issues for some users that could have easily been detected by testing on the DEV server. Why was the decision made to award extra votes to people based on hours played?  This metric is not a true representation of how much time a user has with the VTT as sitting idle with Roll20 open accrues hours played. Do you have any intention of convincing users that voting actually matters?  If so, how? How do you intend to stay competitive with other VTTs?  There is a lot of community push away from Roll20 at the moment (primarily towards Foundry or the upcoming WotC VTT.)  Will Roll20 be offering anything cutting-edge to convince users to keep paying for their Roll20 subscription? It has been recommended before that there should be a Roll20 employee responsible for monitoring the forums and serving as a liaison between Roll20 customers and Roll20 devs rather than relying on community support.  Do you have any intention of pursuing this suggestion? -Adam

I would like to hear more about: The Red Charactermancer button Transmogrify for folders Transmogrify for MACROS Transmogrify for MODs (API Scrtipts) Third party integration of Audio and Video, such as Discord, Syrinscape, Voicemeeter, Etc. The Orr report

TheMarkus1204 said: What about the Integration of Onebookshelf which was greatly announced a while ago and then kept silent? Is this still a thing? That would be nice to know.  I have noticed that purchases on DriveThruRPG are now processed as payments to The Orr Group, so the business/financial side of things has happened.

It seems actual-plays like CR and D20 have been blowing up in popularity this year, and I've seen Roll20 mentioned out in the wild more and more (Carlos Luna, you're awesome!). I've also noticed the product team becoming more engaged and trying tools like Productboard to communicate with users about upcoming features. Is Roll20 planning on continuing this growth trend into 2023, or will there be more of a focus on stability & hardening of the current offering? Additionally, while I know D&D is just one of the TTRPG systems available for use in Roll20, I'm sure it's among the most popular. With WotC's "One D&D" launching in 2024 with D&D Digital, their 3D tabletop space, are there any partnership plans on the horizon, or will Roll20's focus remain on the top-down 2D system that works with more than just D&D?

I can't make the Q&A - I'm running my weekly game at the time. But, some questions I'd like answered:    - Will the problems with the Big Red Always There Red Button for the charactermancer be fixed?    - Will the charactermancer be able to handle both current 5E and whatever the new thing is being released by WoTC, whatever it's finally called, but will still be, supposedly, labelled "5E"?    - Will the staff stop making changes to the UI without warning/announcment, and go back to testing things first on the development server, and getting feedback before actually implementing them? This would have solved all the problems with the Big Red Always There Red Button for the charactermancer, and some of the other problems that have arisen in the last 6 or so months.    - I don't know about others, but I've occasionally gotten these "surveys" where I've been asked to test new features. Are we ever going to be told which, if any, of these new features will be implemented or the results of the surveys?     - What is the time frame for moving to the new voice system? I'd like to know so I can give my players a heads up. I don't want to see this suddenly dropped on us without warning like other things have been.     - Will the staff ever post EXPLICITLY what is added or made available when the monthly reserve is given to us Pro/Plus users? Right now, I have to spend hours trying to figure out what's been added and where. Sometimes things get added to "Free assets", sometimes to "Subscriptions", sometimes to "Marketplace purchases" and sometimes just as folders in the "Journal". It's a guessing game every month!! That's all I can think of right now. I may have more. I'm hoping that the answers will be posted here.

The token rotation widget gets obscured by the radial bubbles when at common zoom percentages and is inaccessible for turning a token. Any chance the widget can be layered over the radial bubbles or move them further out (or closer in) based on zoom percentage? This has been a common point of grief (and an inside joke) for my players and I for years.

On that matter, sometimes the rotation thing is too transparent to be seen.  Perhaps modify it based on the background color or, well, make it LESS transparent?

Good news, but unfortunately I haven’t come up with a question yet, I’ll write it very soon, just know it :)

Dear Roll20 Team, When in the future do you think that we will be able to use Multiple Character Sheets in a single game table? In 2022, the "Kingmaker" AP demanded this crossover utility &amp; Roll20 Staff developed the ingenious Kingmaker Sheet that can combine Pathfinder stats access with D&amp;D 5E stats compatability. This required very sophisticated Roll20 proprietary Sheet development. With "Multiple Sheets per game" Roll20 can empower everyone to Buy Pathfinder AP's and play it with any system (be it OSR clone game systems, PF2, DND 5, One D&amp;D in the future). Multiple Sheets per game would have many other Game-Empowering advantages, which Users tell in these threads: Popular suggestion thread: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6493089/multiple-sheets-in-a-game" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6493089/multiple-sheets-in-a-game</a> Riley D suggested it: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1239632/multiple-character-sheet-layouts/?pagenum=1" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1239632/multiple-character-sheet-layouts/?pagenum=1</a> Hundreds more people have asked over the years: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/search?q=multiple%20sheets&amp;c=" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/search?q=multiple%20sheets&amp;c=</a> Morgan, I asked about this at the previous Q&amp;A about a year ago. Kingmaker has been realized since then. What's the status of this idea for PRO or all users?

Gold said: Dear Roll20 Team, In 2022, the "Kingmaker" AP demanded this crossover utility &amp; Roll20 Staff developed the ingenious Kingmaker Sheet that can combine Pathfinder stats access with D&amp;D 5E stats compatability. This required very sophisticated Roll20 proprietary Sheet development. All they did was give the sheet another "tab" that can be made visible while hiding everything else. It is essentially a second npc view.&nbsp; It doesn't use anything that wasn't possible before, and it isn't a separate sheet.

Hi folks! Welcome to another Forum AMA. I'm really excited to answer your questions today and hopefully give you an idea of some of the things we're prioritizing right now. I'm going to be diving into the questions here in roughly the order that we received them. Some questions that are similar are going to get grouped up, so if I don't answer every question of yours all at once, its probably coming up in a group reply.

Applause!

Martijn S. said: So excited to hear what will be improved early next year! Maybe fan favorites 'a better way to organize pages'&nbsp;&nbsp; I can confirm that Better Page Organization is a priority this year! It was something that we initially intended to roll out in 2022, but ::spoilers:: we’ve planned some major UI improvements I’ll be talking about more below and felt it was better to include page management as part of that larger chunk of work. It IS planned for 2023 and as the team progresses on that work we’ll get a better idea of how soon its coming. More on Transmogrifier in a bit.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

Q: The red Charactermancer icon in the AD&amp;D 5E character sheet should be disabled until the player actually can go up in levels. Otherwise, the unwitting player finds themselves going up in levels they are not ready for. I will say the flashing icon is an improvement!

Grand DM said: Question: What will be done to improve loading video aka animated battlemaps? Many of us are part of amazing Patreons that make them. Even after downsizing the video (under 10mb) they almost never upload. I can send that same video on something like Facebook Messenger in under a minute.&nbsp; Ahpook said: I would like to double down on this question and expand it to just:&nbsp; Full-Size Animated Maps when? Just a little mad said: I would love to know the status on WebP images and if we could see official support for them. Doors and Windows are hiding some big new stuff with them.&nbsp; Both of them are utilizing a new framework for rendering token like items on the VTT.&nbsp; Now that we've rolled this change out we intend to gradually push that technology into all of the other image displays on the VTT.&nbsp; That's going to unlock a lot of image file format options and significantly improve performance for animated tokens and map layers.&nbsp; I can't give an ETA on this one just yet as the Operation Firebolt team has a few other things on their plate, but it is coming.&nbsp;

Grand DM said: Question: What will be done to improve loading video aka animated battlemaps? Many of us are part of amazing Patreons that make them. Even after downsizing the video (under 10mb) they almost never upload. I can send that same video on something like Facebook Messenger in under a minute.&nbsp; Also!&nbsp; Happy to say that as of today the max file size for these has been doubled to 20mb.&nbsp; Hopefully that helps with some of these situations.&nbsp; We're also doing some initial research on alternative ways of converting images on upload.&nbsp; All that said, the real solve here is the improvement in file format options in my previous post.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Any updates on plans to make certain services more available to smaller developers to put their games on Roll20? Compendium data-entry and styling come to mind.&nbsp; Also from the developer side, any chancce we can get html &lt;video&gt; tags to work in character sheets? File sizes become a problem for any non-video formats.&nbsp;

Just a little mad said: I would love to know the status on WebP images and if we could see official support for them. I second this question.&nbsp;

Grand DM said: Question: Space. How can we get more of it? There was a small bump done, thank you. But as a Pro user that runs multiple campaigns, I want more. Especially when thinking about video and music files. Space in the IT world is cheap. Is more space coming in 2023? Titus said: Will Plus users get a storage bump anytime soon?… I am pretty confident that we will see more storage space increases this next year.&nbsp; We're constantly re-examining our quotas and we're going to continue tuning them higher as we have confidence about the impact of doing so.&nbsp; What we really need to sort out is how we will make space limits work for professional GMs and other GMs who run a really large number of games.&nbsp; I'll be honest that we're still researching that use case and exploring options so I don't have an answer on what we're doing there just yet.&nbsp; If you have suggestions I'd love to hear more, and maybe some of that could make it over to the Suggestions forum!

Martijn S. said: So excited to hear what will be improved early next year! Maybe fan favorites 'a better way to organize pages'&nbsp; and 'Transmogrifier allow copying of folders'?&nbsp; Grand DM said: Question: Are there any plans to update the Transmogrifier? For instance, the ability to copy an entire folder and all its contents?&nbsp; Keeper of Secrets (KoS) said: I would like to hear more about: Transmogrify for folders Transmogrify for MACROS Transmogrify for MODs (API Scrtipts) (Sorry for messing up the numbering on your questions KoS) We're actually doing a lot of rethinking right now, not just about the Transmogrifier, but about the interaction between Journals and Journal folders, Add Ons, Modules and the Transmogrifier.&nbsp; Some of that rethinking might end up solving for all of these cases.&nbsp; If not, we'll definitely circle back on Transmogrifier.&nbsp; Suffice to say, it needs to be a lot easier to organize your content and move it from game to game regardless of the source of that data.&nbsp; All of this is in the research phase though, so I wouldn't expect a change here in the first part of the year.&nbsp;&nbsp;

TheMarkus1204 said: What about the Integration of Onebookshelf which was greatly announced a while ago and then kept silent? Is this still a thing? Very early in the year you're going to start seeing community content from DMsGuild and Pathfinder Infinite converted for Roll20 available on their respective shops.&nbsp; With that bit of functionality, DriveThru creators will also be able to sell Roll20 content, either as a standalone or bundled with other content.&nbsp;&nbsp; We're still planning to automate the process of making your Drivethru RPG PDFs available to you on the VTT.&nbsp; In order to do that we have to work through how to associate a Roll20 account with a Drivethru RPG account.&nbsp; Doing that in a non-annoying way is tricky so its slowing that process down, but we'll get there!

Luke B said: Wondering about the status of the Pathfinder 2nd edition charactermancer. Has there been any progress and do you have an idea when it will be finished? I'd also be interested in what the timeline looks like for this&nbsp;

Jaden R. said: Luke B said: Wondering about the status of the Pathfinder 2nd edition charactermancer. Has there been any progress and do you have an idea when it will be finished? I'd also be interested in what the timeline looks like for this&nbsp; Plus 1 to this, and also a timeline for when drag and drop will be implemented for the Advanced Players Guide. I’m surprised all the other PF products have that but one of the earliest PF2e expansions still does not.&nbsp;

Any plans for allowing more 3d dice options?&nbsp; Would like to be able to add more functionality for handouts&nbsp;

Regarding PDFs, I find that editable PDFs such as character sheets can be edited in-game, but changes are not saved once the PDF is closed. Is there a plan to improve this?

Q: anything new coming for Mods (API)? &nbsp;=D Q: anything to share about impending Character Sheet updates? Q: with the new token system, will Mods (API) be able to create content from the marketplace?

Saul J. said: &nbsp; &nbsp;- Will the problems with the Big Red Always There Red Button for the charactermancer be fixed? J L. said: Q: The red Charactermancer icon in the AD&amp;D 5E character sheet should be disabled until the player actually can go up in levels. Otherwise, the unwitting player finds themselves going up in levels they are not ready for. I will say the flashing icon is an improvement! Keeper of Secrets (KoS) said: I would like to hear more about: The Red Charactermancer button We want to balance all of your concerns with the Charactermancer level up button with the survey data we have showing us how much difficulty players have finding that button when they need it.&nbsp; So first off, the button is not going to go away completely.&nbsp; That said, we get how it causes confusion for some games.&nbsp; We'll be working with folks on the forums to hammer out a solution that keeps that utility accessible for games where it makes sense, but either hides it or deprioritizes it (by removing the red or by some other mechanism) if you're not qualified for it or the game is set up not to use the Charactermancer.&nbsp;&nbsp;

How about that PF2 Charactermancer, been over 3 years.

Yawp said: It seems actual-plays like CR and D20 have been blowing up in popularity this year, and I've seen Roll20 mentioned out in the wild more and more (Carlos Luna, you're awesome!). I've also noticed the product team becoming more engaged and trying tools like Productboard to communicate with users about upcoming features. Is Roll20 planning on continuing this growth trend into 2023, or will there be more of a focus on stability &amp; hardening of the current offering? Additionally, while I know D&amp;D is just one of the TTRPG systems available for use in Roll20, I'm sure it's among the most popular. With WotC's "One D&amp;D" launching in 2024 with D&amp;D Digital, their 3D tabletop space, are there any partnership plans on the horizon, or will Roll20's focus remain on the top-down 2D system that works with more than just D&amp;D? Hey thanks for noticing!&nbsp; We have a lot more new features planned this year and we want to continue to get better and better about proactively communicating with the community.&nbsp; We're moving away from ProductBoard specifically because a lot of folks didn't like it, but we want to keep that energy and engagement going and improve it.&nbsp; There's hardening work to do to, but we have the Operation Firebolt team dedicated to that so that we can have our stabilty cake and ... eat ... cool features ... too?&nbsp; That metaphor did not work.&nbsp;&nbsp; While I'd love to talk about future partherships, thats the kind of stuff I can't get into here.&nbsp; What I can definitely say is that we want to continue to be a great place to play every game, which absolutely includes D&amp;D.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Luke B said: Wondering about the status of the Pathfinder 2nd edition charactermancer. Has there been any progress and do you have an idea when it will be finished? Jaden R. said: I'd also be interested in what the timeline looks like for this&nbsp; Will H. said: Plus 1 to this, and also a timeline for when drag and drop will be implemented for the Advanced Players Guide. I’m surprised all the other PF products have that but one of the earliest PF2e expansions still does not.&nbsp; I want this so bad, and I'm really sorry that we haven't been able to have a sufficient answer here.&nbsp; We're committed to Pathfinder 2e and I hope that the Kingmaker release as well as our recent announcement about supporting Pathfinder Infinite content on Roll20 demonstrates that.&nbsp; We're looking at multiple options to solve this and we're hoping some recent improvements in our charactersheet and charactermancer creation toolset will finally unblock us from proceeding on this as soon as possible. Will H, actually I didn't know about that one.&nbsp; I'm going to forward that over to the Content team and see if there is anything blocking this.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Thank you, Morgan!

Saul J. said: I can't make the Q&amp;A - I'm running my weekly game at the time. But, some questions I'd like answered: &nbsp; &nbsp;- I don't know about others, but I've occasionally gotten these "surveys" where I've been asked to test new features. Are we ever going to be told which, if any, of these new features will be implemented or the results of the surveys?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;- What is the time frame for moving to the new voice system? I'd like to know so I can give my players a heads up. I don't want to see this suddenly dropped on us without warning like other things have been. &nbsp; &nbsp; - Will the staff ever post EXPLICITLY what is added or made available when the monthly reserve is given to us Pro/Plus users? Right now, I have to spend hours trying to figure out what's been added and where. Sometimes things get added to "Free assets", sometimes to "Subscriptions", sometimes to "Marketplace purchases" and sometimes just as folders in the "Journal". It's a guessing game every month!! You're giving me a great segue here!&nbsp; A big theme of 2023 is going to be significant ease of use and quality of life improvements on the VTT UI.&nbsp; The results of successful surveys will be rolling out with that.&nbsp; I'll be talking about this a lot more in an upcoming video, but expect to start seeing some big improvements and modernization.&nbsp;&nbsp; We'll keep making announcements along with the way.&nbsp; The next step is to make new Voice and Video the default for new games.&nbsp; We'll wait for those things to settle before we remove the old voice and video in any way.&nbsp;&nbsp; We've been trying to add context information on the Announcement forums about Reserve Releases and how to access them.&nbsp; The latest is here:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/11221213/december-roll20-reserve-dragon-bundle-by-tom-cartos-vicnedel-and-david-hemenway#post-11234194" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/11221213/december-roll20-reserve-dragon-bundle-by-tom-cartos-vicnedel-and-david-hemenway#post-11234194</a> &nbsp;.&nbsp; Is that the kind of info you are looking for there or is there something still missing?&nbsp;

Richard T. said: Any updates on plans to make certain services more available to smaller developers to put their games on Roll20? Compendium data-entry and styling come to mind.&nbsp; Also from the developer side, any chancce we can get html &lt;video&gt; tags to work in character sheets? File sizes become a problem for any non-video formats.&nbsp; The Aaron said: Q: anything new coming for Mods (API)? &nbsp;=D Q: anything to share about impending Character Sheet updates? Q: with the new token system, will Mods (API) be able to create content from the marketplace? For Compendiums and Drag and Drop data entry, yes we're researching how to make this more accessible right now!&nbsp; Its going to be tricky so I'm not sure when we'll see it roll out, but this is on our minds a lot.&nbsp;&nbsp; Mods:&nbsp; We'll keep on giving mods access to functionality in new features as those release.&nbsp; We want to take another pass at identifying low hanging fruit for new Mod script functionality though partially because .... Character Sheets:&nbsp; A LOT will be happening here.&nbsp; We have an entirely new charactersheet ecosystem that we're going to begin rolling out this year.&nbsp; First on our own sheets, then to a few partners and then as soon as possible to community creators.&nbsp; We call it the Beacon Sheet Development Kit.&nbsp; Using Beacon you'll have a small npm package you can pull in that exposes an API to control the VTT and VTT interactions, including some powerful new functionality previously only available with Mods (like setting light and vision settings from the sheet!)&nbsp; Sheet developers using Beacon will be able to use most html, css and javascript with few restrictions.&nbsp; The goal is to allow sheet developers to be able to bring their favorite web development tools to bear, from simple HTML to React and Vue.&nbsp; Internally we're using Vue to develop these sheets and are also hoping to share some parts of the UI component toolkit we're building to speed up sheet development.&nbsp; The old system will continue to function as well for folks who prefer it and especially to make sure that there is still a programming-lite option for releasing sheets.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Getting that all tested and rolled out is a big endeavor.&nbsp; We're already using it on some in progress sheets so you'll start to see bits of it rolling out soon, but it may take us a bit to get to a full community release.&nbsp; More to come on this soon!&nbsp;&nbsp; TheAaron, I'm not sure what you're referring to with the New Token System.&nbsp; &nbsp;Can you elaborate?&nbsp;&nbsp;

Is the Dev Server going to see any of this action? or is that advertised feature being retired in favor of direct updates?&nbsp;

Morgan B. said: TheAaron, I'm not sure what you're referring to with the New Token System.&nbsp; &nbsp;Can you elaborate?&nbsp;&nbsp; I think he's referring to this: Morgan B. &nbsp;said: ... a new framework for rendering token like items on the VTT.&nbsp; Now that we've rolled this change out we intend to gradually push that technology into all of the other image displays on the VTT. &nbsp; That's going to unlock a lot of image file format options and significantly improve performance for animated tokens and map layers.&nbsp;

Yup, that!

I am also very curious if anything in this new framework might allow API Scripts to integrate with marketplace content, but I also realize I'm very late to the dance here.